Product Description

After a flood of train games it is nice to see another transport system featured in a game. Bus is about developing a bus system in an expanding city. The game is played on a large map, which is promised to be a delight for experienced gamers (!), and it features 3 types of buildings: homes, offices and bars. Citizens spend their entire lives travelling from their homes to work to the bar and back home again, and it is the players job to build a bus system that keep this infrastructure effective in order to obtain the ultimate goal: to earn a lot of money.

You can do this by buying more buses, expanding your lines, or making sure your bus rides before any other busses do--that will allow you to take away other people's passengers. But you can also decide to build new houses, offices and bars at strategic locations--or to attract more people to the city so that you can earn more. If other players don't lure them away....

Each turn, players decide which actions to take by using two or more of their action tokens--players have 20 to spend as they please during the game. Timing is all-important, so the game is all about interaction--guessing, or if you're clever, foreseeing what the other companies are going to do. There is no luck involved, but it does contain a weird twist in the form of a mad scientist. He has discovered a machine that can stop the time--which will really hurt most bus companies, but perhaps not all.

Product Reviews

Forget the warped board and the fact that a person may fall over occasionally--it's not a big deal. This is the Die Macher of transportation games, and has some wonderful mechanisms working in tandem to keep you thinking and engaged throughout the whole game. When you notice that the scoring track only goes up to 20 or so, and that the play time is around 3 hours, you will wonder why it is so hard to get people where they want to go! Spiteful opponents and limited opportunities for control go a long way toward explaining it! Great game, but the board IS going to be warped, and therefore the price is going to sting.

First, the four sections that comprise the board came slightly bent so the pieces have a hard time staying in place. Some of the pieces have to stand vertically, and end up falling over when someone would make the table shake even slightly.

Secondly, it could use a much bigger board. When you have four parallel routes running in the same road, it gets over-crowded and hard to keep track of.

Once we got past the VERY steep learning curve, things picked up. Unfortunately the frustration in learning this game (even though I read the rules about 20 times) caused many headaches and my friends lost interest... but we managed to have fun in the end.

So, after all that, this ended up being very interesting game that we'll probably try again.

Just don't expect to play this game correctly the first time and make sure you play a few 'Learning Rounds' before you actually play a real game.

Ben Baldanza
(Counter Magazine)

April 30, 2000

Bus is one of two full-size box games released by Splotter at Essen 1999,
along with Roads and Boats. Through the game, players use a limited set of actions to build a road network in an attempt to deliver passengers to their desired destinations. The mechanisms employed in this basic concept are quite original and lead to a contemplative and close game play. While Bus has some peculiarities, it is one of the better games released last
year and is definitely worth a play if you've not had the chance to try
it.

The great-looking board shows the city plan with a series of intersecting
streets, locations for buildings to be constructed, and two train terminals.
At setup, each player gets one bus, places two buildings and places the
first two sections of their road network in 'Settlers' fashion. After
passengers are set on each of the four center corner intersections, the
game begins with the first set of actions.

The idea of the game is to move passengers from where they are to where
they want to be. Where they want to be is determined by the time of day;
in the day, they are at work, in the evening at the pub, and at home overnight.
Each building (work, pub, and home) is built at intersections, so if a
passenger is delivered to a pub when it is evening, the player that carried
them gets one point. Since the clock rotates from home to work to pub
continually, every successfully moved passenger starts the next round on
the previous time's building. Our pub passenger next turn would want to
go home, so the bus that carries him to a 'home' building gets another
point.

The Action Board, a separate strip from the main board, is the heart of
the game mechanic and includes seven options. You only have 21 actions
to use during the whole game, however, and must use at least 2 per turn,
limiting the flexibility. Colored cubes represent the 21 actions that each
player is given at the start, although the first is used in the setup to
place a bus in the parking lot (one of the seven actions available on the
board.) No actions are taken until everyone places each action cube that
they plan to use for that round, beginning with the start player and only
choosing one action at a time until everyone else has the chance to place.
While you must choose at least two actions, you can choose as many as
you'd like up to your limit of cubes. In practicality, you will use three
actions once in a while and rarely find use for four in a single round.
Once everyone has placed, the actions are executed in the manner that they
are laid out on the Action Board, left to right. This has real implications,
as you will see.

Some of the actions can be chosen by multiple players, while others, once
chosen, are closed for the rest of that round. Three of the actions are
limited by a concept called the "maximum number of buses". This is simply
the most buses owned by any single player, and it limits the number of
players that can choose the action and the number of buildings that can
be constructed, passengers that can enter the city, and roads that can
be built. Importantly, this limit decrements for each player after the
first to choose the action. For example, if Dave has three buses in his
fleet and this is more than any other player, only three players can build
buildings. The first player to choose the action builds three, the next builds
two, and the last builds only one. The same is true for road construction
and new passengers, although sometimes the first player to place gets to
move first and sometimes last for the chosen action because of the left
to right rule.

Understanding each action is key. Here they are in order from left to
right on the Action Board as they are executed:

Build Roads: Using the concept above, the roads built equals the maximum number of buses from the previous round. This is because, as the first
action executed, even if someone chooses to add a bus they would not have
their action implemented until after the roads are built. In most cases,
once a road is built it will be unique for that block, but there are rules
that allow multiple roads in the same lane when routes are cut off or two
different lines meet at their heads. Multiple people can request this
action.

Add a Bus: Only one player per round can do this, and when they do
the action block is pulled into a parking spot with their other bus(es).
This gives an easy visual reference to the number of buses in each fleet,
and the maximum number of buses concept described earlier. When run, each
bus can carry one passenger at a time.

Build Buildings: Using the maximum buses process,
players can build their choice of buildings on spots still open. Spots are labeled A, B, C, or D and all the A's must be filled before the first B, etc. This keeps development roughly toward the city center early, spreading out as the bus lines grow. Since some intersections serve two building spots, placing
different building on the two spots can make a passenger just jump across
the street with no bus movement needed when the time changes. Each building,
like the buses, can only accommodate one person at a time.

Add Passengers: People enter the city at one of two rail stations,
and from there can be taken by any bus to their desired location. There
are a fixed number of people in the game, and often all the potential passengers
are in the city by mid-game. This is the last action to use the maximum
buses limit.

The Clock: Only one player can affect the clock, and if no one selects this action the clock moves ahead as normal to the next 3-way position
(Home to Work to Pub). If selected by one person, that player has the
right to stop the clock (not allow its advancement) at the cost of one
victory point. This freezes many passengers, since by definition those
successfully delivered last round will already be where they want to be.
This tactic can be used both offensively and defensively and is one of
the issues discussed below where an improvement may help.

Run the Buses: This is the only action that allows you to score points. Beginning with the first player to choose the action, each player runs
each bus in their fleet, attempting to deliver one passenger on their line
to an appropriate building elsewhere on their line. No other lines can
be used, and if there are no appropriate empty buildings or available people
then the action is wasted. Like all multiple-player actions, this can
be chosen more than once for multiple scoring opportunities.

Start Player: The one player to choose this action will be the start
player the next round. If not chosen, the start player rotates, but this
likely will never happen as the ability to place your action first gives
the ability to build the most roads, run the first bus, or other 'he who
is first wins' actions.

How these actions are used determines the speed, flow, and scoring opportunities
in the game. The mechanic works well most of the time, although smart
play usually results in very low scores as people try to block scoring
opportunities for others if they will not disproportionately benefit.
This is the first weakness in the game: it is too heavy for its theme.
Studious gamers will spend a lot of time analyzing their action placement
and implementation, creating a serious mood for what otherwise could be
a strategic yet faster moving process.

The good points of the game clearly outweigh the weak, however. There
are real choices in the action phase, although typically building roads
and running buses will take precedent. Being locked out of first place, or in fifth place in a five-player game, can be the difference between
scoring multiple points or nothing at all. This brings up the second flaw
in the game: very low scoring with four or five players. The world loves
soccer except for the US, so maybe it's my national bias that makes me
cringe a bit at a high score of seven after a two-hour play. That said,
the game is clearly exciting and keeps everyone interested due to the constant
changing road networks, passenger flows, building constructions, and scoring
potentials.

The last issue that raises some question is the clock. As mentioned before,
choosing to stop time effectively freezes out many possible plays since
the location preference doesn't change. Speaking with Gerard Mulder at
the Gathering of Friends, he told me of a discussion whereby instead of
stopping the clock the player would advance two spaces instead of one,
ensuring that people could move but possibly not where most had planned.
I'm eager to try this idea as it makes sense and may make the clock play
both more strategic and less frustrating.

The production value of Bus can't be overlooked. The board shows a city
nicely populated with buildings and fixtures all named after other games
("Axis and Alloys Wreckers" is a personal favorite,) and a scoring track
made of islets named after other games. All of the other Splotter titles
appear, of course. The naming has nothing to do with the game, but makes
for a very nice appearance and generates a lot of smiles when people first
realize what they're looking at. While only a limited number were produced,
Splotter has promised to have more available for this year's Essen so those
interested should be able to find a copy soon. Get one for yourself, and
get on the Bus!

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